


The Communicator

by onereyofstarlight



Series: Fluffember Prompts 2019 [9]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Cyberbullying, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22359586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/pseuds/onereyofstarlight
Summary: John receives some messages he'd rather keep quiet. Jeff wonders how he didn't see it earlier.
Series: Fluffember Prompts 2019 [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606219
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	The Communicator

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate the irony that I kept filling fluff prompts with angst. Oh well. Warnings for teenage bullying, both cyber and verbal. If you're a teen experiencing bully, please talk to a trusted adult and uh... don't follow John's behaviour here. Also light discussion of grief.

“Where have you been?” exclaimed Jeff. “I’ve been worried sick!”

John shrugged as he sloped inside and dumped his bag on the kitchen counter. “Robotics club,” he muttered. “Went late. Sorry.”

“Sorry? Your older brothers have been searching up and down the county, ever since you didn’t get home on time, and all you can say is _sorry_?”

“Yes.”

Gordon held his hand out to Alan and began to drag him out of the room. John looked firmly up at his father, jaw set in a stubborn line.

“I have told you before, John,” said Jeff with a sigh. “You need to communicate with us. For heavens’ sake, just a message would have been enough.”

John held his father’s gaze mutinously. His shoulders hunched in on himself as he looked away.

“Yeah, whatever,” he muttered. “Can I go now?”

Jeff pursed his lips. His son felt more and more distant from him every day and he felt helpless to prevent it. John just didn’t speak to him anymore and Jeff was going spare with worry. He wished Lucy was here. He knew to an extent that John was just being a teenager, pushing boundaries in an attempt to create his own space. He knew she might not have had any more success with their prickly son who wanted nothing more than to live in his own universe and be left alone. But she would have helped him not feel so lonely in the never-ending battle to reach out to John.

“Call your brothers,” he told John. “Let them know you’re home. I need to take Gordon to his writing tutor.”

Jeff left, corralling Gordon and Alan, and leaving John standing alone in the kitchen. He looked down at the communicator on his wrist before sighing and calling Scott.

“Scott?”

“John? Virgil, it’s John.” Scott’s hologram blinked up at him. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Just got home,” mumbled John. “Robotics went late and I–”

“No, it didn’t,” interrupted Virgil. “John, you don’t think we knew you were at Robotics after school? That’s the first place we looked.”

John faltered. “Don’t tell Dad,” he whispered.

“Don’t tell him what?” demanded Scott. “John, what’s going on?”

Anger flared inside him against a brother who couldn’t possibly understand and John suddenly hated his brother. He knew it wasn’t fair to Scott to do so, but he hated him all the same.

“Nothing, Scott,” he snapped. “Just don’t tell Dad.”

He shut off the comm and ripped it off his wrist. His eye caught sight of a flash and he froze.

John stared at the blinking light on his comm. He wasn’t going to look at it. The message that was waiting to be read taunted him. _What if it’s Scott,_ he wondered. _What if it’s Dad?_

He knew deep down that it wasn’t.

He also knew if he left the communicator downstairs, eventually one of his nosy brothers would pick it up and flick through trying to find out who could possibly be messaging John all night. _Probably Gordon_ , thought John bitterly.

He was almost tempted. At least then they’d know. And the flashing wouldn’t be left to torment him throughout the night as more and more messages flooded his communicator.

He could tell himself he was just insulted by their lack of imagination. He could tell himself their words meant nothing to him. He could tell himself they were merely jealous and didn’t know how to cope with the feeling of inferiority. Only he wasn’t sure anymore what he had that anyone could want to be jealous of.

The communicator seemed to flash even more urgently as John snatched it up and escaped to his room upstairs. It was the smallest, but as the alternative was sharing with his brothers, he was quite willing to compromise for the sake of privacy and the ability to shut the door.

He dropped the comm on the desk and flopped down on his bed, staring out the window at the setting sun. Shadows crept across his room and gradually the silent house grew alive with activity once more. There might have been a soft knock on his door, twice, no three times, but John firmly ignored it. He didn’t move to turn the lights on as the Earth turned her face from the Sun, the only illumination in his room the twinkling stars and the hallway light that shone from underneath the door. Eventually, clouds covered the sky as the night cooled and even the hallway light was switched off as the house sighed a final breath before sleep enveloped its occupants.

The communicator was still blinking.

***

John had left the comm in his bag this morning, buried underneath his lunch. He didn’t need it, those Luddites on the news were doing just fine and so would he.

John’s morning was blissful. No insults peppering his concentration, no eye kept on the LED on his comm at all times, no sinking dread whenever it flashed. His teachers nodded approvingly as he found he was able to fly through his work without half a mind churning distractedly through the problem plaguing his daily life. Eventually however, his peers would have to notice his ease. And there were more ways than one to leave a mark.

The whispers started in third lesson. A hiss as John slipped the earpiece in to complete his task list. A muffled giggle as he walked over to the paper recycler. He ignored it all, schooled his reactions carefully so as to not give them any further ammunition. He began to eye his peers carefully as they moved around him, careful to not leave his back covered and to navigate around their casual touch. None of them would touch John willingly and he had learnt to be wary of any outstretched olive branch. The shattering of his trust never ceased to be a source of endless amusement to them.

After lunch, he was exhausted from the constant vigilance and anxious to return home. Tightly wound and with a brain strung out on vitriolic mockery, John only heard the word whispered behind his back. He reacted.

***

“He’s been _what_?”

Jeff had taken the call in his office and his two assistants looked at each other uneasily. Jeff pinched the bridge of his nose, pushing his glasses up over his forehead.

“No, no, I quite understand. Is the boy okay?”

There was a silence as Jeff carefully listened to the other person speaking.

“I’ll be right down,” he said, looking significantly at Rose. She began scurrying through the remaining schedule, cancelling appointments and sending emails of apology. James immediately began to clear away and reorganise the files open on Jeff’s holoscreen as he stepped away from the desk. “Just let me call Lu-someone to pick up the younger boys.”

He began to stride out of the room, already calling Scott.

“You need to pick up Alan from school,” he said without any form of greeting.

“Dad?” asked Scott, confused. “Dad, what’s going on, the kids at school are saying John’s been in a fight.”

“Just get your brother please,” he said. “Tell Virgil to collect Gordon. Go straight home. I’ll meet you there.”

“Yes sir,” said Scott. “We’ll be there.”

Jeff signed off, hurrying through the building. Being called in to collect his children from the school office was unfortunately nothing new to him. But the idea that one of his sons had been suspended was not one he was used to. And for the boy waiting for him at the other end to be John? Jeff’s thoughts raced frantically. Where had everything gone so wrong? The idea that any of his sons would resort to serious acts of violence was abhorrent to him, although he knew they had their rough and tumble moments at home. But never John, John had always sat apart from that, preferring to one up his brothers with his brains over his fists.

He screeched into the empty visitors parking at the school and strode into the admin building.

“Afternoon Shelly,” he said to the woman in the reception office. “I’m here to collect John.”

Shelly nodded, grimacing a little at Jeff.

“He’s outside the principal’s office,” she said. “And Jeff? Go easy. I’ve known John since he was a toddler, picking at the icing on his older brother’s birthday cake. This isn’t like him.”

Jeff nodded, looking troubled. “And the other boy? Robbie?”

Shelly’s lips thinned. That was all the response Jeff needed.

“Thanks for looking out for him, Shelly.”

“Any time, Jeff.”

He walked forward, turning through the corridors until he came across his little red-headed boy sitting hunched over and staring at the floor. He was swinging his legs idly and the fluorescent lights seemed to bleach his skin from fair to white. It didn’t nothing to allay Jeff’s anxiety.

John looked up as he approached and Jeff could see the odd, closed-off expression that had become so familiar ever since John had begun his adventures in high school and teenagedom.

“What happened, John?”

“Dad, please don’t do this now.”

“You have twenty seconds to give me a reason not to ground you for life. We’re doing this now.”

“I punched someone in the face and broke his nose,” said John, his eyes flashing. For a moment, Jeff could see the mask slip away, the anger and the hurt written all over John’s expression. “And I know, there’s no good reason to hit someone like that. But it was just…” John trailed off, that strange and distant expression settling over his features like a comforting friend. “I was just stupid.”

“There may be no good reason to hit someone but there’s never _no_ reason,” said Jeff sharply. “I’d like to think you could have spoken to me about whatever caused this long before it got to this point.”

The door opened behind them.

“Mr Tracy? Come on in.”

Mrs Solis, the principal of the high school his three eldest boys attended, was not inclined to waste time. She explained to Jeff the statements that had been made against John, the apparent lack of motivation prior to the blow, and the strict no-tolerance policy implemented surrounding violence at the school.

“This was an unprovoked attack on a boy. We cannot tolerate this kind of behaviour.”

“Nor would I expect you too,” said Jeff. He had kept an eye on John throughout the meeting and it seemed he was not going to delve deeper into his reasoning behind the thrown punch. For all that this was meant to be a three-way conversation, it appeared that John was prepared to allow his father and his principal discuss his fate over his head.

“He will need to be kept home for three days, and on John’s return, he will need to report to my office at the beginning of the day. He will be required to meet with the guidance department weekly for the remainder of the year. And of course, he will need to meet with Robbie and apologise before he will be accepted back into class.”

“I won’t.”

Mrs Solis blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I won’t apologise,” said John, folding his arms over his chest. “You can kick me out of classes, put me on report, revoke my club privileges, but you can’t make me apologise to _him_.”

Jeff had never heard a pronoun sound so venomous on John’s tongue. Mrs Solis tutted impatiently. “Young man, do you understand that if you had been a year older, an attack like this would have prompted a call to the police?”

“Why do you not feel an apology is in order, John?” asked Jeff. He hoped he could prompt John into defending himself for although it was certain he had been in the wrong, Jeff knew there was more to this story than John was willing to share.

“Because that jerk started it,” burst out John. He picked up his backpack and upended it on Mrs Solis’ desk – a tablet, food, old fashioned textbooks, half-wired mechanisms and oddly enough his communicator fell out. Jeff hadn’t even noticed his son wasn’t wearing it. It was blinking furiously when John snatched it up and thrust it at his father.

“That might clear my feelings up,” he snarled and then stormed out of the office.

Mrs Solis shook her head. “I don’t envy your trip home together,” she said, gathering her materials.

“Aren’t you going to listen to it?” asked Jeff, staring at the flashing LED.

“Of course not,” said Mrs Solis indifferently. “I’m happy to discuss it with John when he has calmed down and returns to school, but it would seem this meeting has come to an end. Good day, Mr Tracy.”

Jeff scowled at her, and hurriedly gathered John’s things into his backpack.

Outside the office, he held the comm in his hands. John was nowhere in sight.

“He’s gone,” said Shelly, looking up. “Caught the 308 bus. I’m sorry Jeff.”

“Not your fault, Shelly,” said Jeff with a tired smile. “Just, hell, how did I miss something this big?”

“You wouldn’t be the first,” said Shelly sympathetically. “And I think you’ve a better excuse than most.”

“It doesn’t matter how busy Gordon and Alan keep me,” said Jeff. “I can’t deny I’ve relied on the older boys to look after themselves these past few months. They still need me.”

“Yes,” said Shelly. “But Jeff, you’re all still grieving. John is still grieving. Lucy’s death is going to affect them for the rest of their lives.”

Jeff started. It was the first time since the funeral that anyone had directly acknowledged the gaping hole left in the fabric of their lives.

“I don’t doubt that John would normally rise above his adversaries,” said Shelly quietly. “But life isn’t going to be normal for a while. It might never be normal again.”

Jeff looked back down at the comm. He had assumed his son had needed space to process what had happened when he’d shut down all attempts at communication. It appeared he had miscalculated desperately, and John was paying the price.

He strode out to the car and strapped John’s comm around his wrist. He reached out and pressed on the flashing light before starting the engine. Curiously, no hologram was projected, only a voice spoke.

The message was clearly addressed to John, and it had arrived that afternoon. It was a website notification, telling John that Username JTsux420 had posted an update. Jeff listened to the comment with a thunderous expression before swiping to the next message. Swiping through he realised every new message for the past twenty-four hours were all notifications for the same site, all detailing things the users didn’t like about John, or found weird, or that he wasn’t good at. By the time Jeff had reached the bus stop where he could see John walking across the fields towards their home, he was fuming and cursing at the unknown users who had been making John’s life hell under his very nose.

“John,” he barked at the receding figure.

John looked up startled at the sight of his apoplectic father. Jeff could see the fear in his widened eyes and struggled to rein in his anger.

“John,” he repeated, much softer. He turned the engine off and leapt out of the car. “Why couldn’t you tell me?”

He flinched back when Jeff reached out to him, and Jeff faltered, unsure of how to approach this boy who had turned into a stranger over the last few months.

“Talk to me, kiddo,” he said softly. At his words, John’s face crumpled and Jeff found himself crushed in a hug.

“Mom knew,” he said softly into Jeff’s chest and his heart stuttered. Of course, Lucy had seen their son struggling. If she had known, why hadn’t he? “I told her on the mountain.”

Jeff froze.

“She said to just ignore them,” said John in a rush, as though if he didn’t get the words out now, he might never get up the nerve again. “And Dad, I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. And I’m sorry that I couldn’t do it.”

“John,” exclaimed Jeff in horror. “John, _no_. She was wrong.”

“But,” John said, looking confused, “but she said, she _promised_.”

“No John,” said Jeff. An ache tore through his heart afresh at the thought that he could have prevented all this pain if only he had paid a little more attention to his children. “Your mom was the most wonderful person in the world and she loved us all dearly. But she wasn’t perfect. And she got it wrong.”

John was silent and Jeff could see his mind processing this new information.

“You should have told me,” said Jeff, gently. “Especially after your mom died.”

“I’m sorry,” mumbled John, looking shame-faced. “It wasn’t that big a deal at first. And then I just couldn’t handle it anymore.”

“Like a frog in boiling water,” said Jeff.

John quirked a smile. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You are going to apologise to that awful boy for hitting him,” Jeff said straightening up. “But not until you and I have spoken to the principal about transferring you to another school and prosecuting everyone involved with that appalling website.”

“Do we have to?” asked John. Together they began to walk back towards the house where Jeff could see Scott turning the lights on for them.

“We don’t have to transfer you,” said Jeff. “But from what I heard I can’t think of any reason to go back.”

“I like being with Scott and Virgil,” offered John. “And I could move into a new class instead. _And_ the Robotics Club _just_ got in a supply of nitinol and Charlie said he’d teach me the new CX8 language. And–”

“Okay,” said Jeff with a laugh. “Okay. But if this ever happens again, even if it’s not as bad as this, you need to promise to tell me, or if I’m away, Grandma.”

“Promise,” said John. “Message received, loud and clear.”

**Author's Note:**

> Crosspost from Tumblr. Original posted on 17/11/2019. Fills Day 14 prompt: Message
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
